


i'm just so bad at things i don't understand

by noirshitsuji



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrinette | Adrien Agreste/Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternative Universe - Human Kwami, Angst, Childhood Friends, Developing Relationship, F/M, Fire, Fire-related trauma, Gabriel Agreste's A+ Parenting, Grief, Loss, Mistakes, POV Tikki, Parental Tikki and Plagg, Past Relationships, Plagg is a Criminal, Redemption, Shop-owner Tikki, Tragic Romance, Trauma, background Adrien Agreste/Marinette Dupain-Cheng - Freeform, everybody needs a hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:48:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28158567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noirshitsuji/pseuds/noirshitsuji
Summary: Human!AU. Tikki and Plagg are childhood friends who fell apart following a tragedy at their hometown in Normandy, but one day Plagg walks into her confiture shop in Paris asking for her help and she finds herself unable to refuse him. Working out their own ghosts is not their only problem, though, not when the son of Paris' most infamous fashion magnate runs away and collides with them.***She regrets it. Of course she regrets it: yesterday she got blinded by the image of the boy she used to know, the one who lived on the dairy farm just outside of Saintévie with his dad and their workers and no siblings and thus no friends to speak of at all, not until he’d met her and the rest of them, at least.He was always a shadow, though, and they’d all told him as much once and he’d jokingly replied that there was only one sun he’d ever want to be cast off from but wouldn’t tell them which, and it hurts her to think he might have meant–Maybe shadows are the burns suns never get to inflict upon the land,Tikki thinks,but if they have no sun to follow, their tendrils turn into annihilating flames.Maybe this is why the fire started.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste & Plagg & Tikki, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug & Plagg & Tikki, Cheesecake - Relationship, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug & Tikki, Plagg/Tikki (Miraculous Ladybug)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 13





	1. it's hard to get to heaven with my head in my hands

**Author's Note:**

> Title of fic and of all chapters from [We Were The Same](https://genius.com/Matt-maeson-we-were-the-same-lyrics) by Matt Maeson.

The autumn air is warm and dusty on her skin, a strange layer of protection against the pit-patter of the rain outside. Not that she needs it – Tikki has been in all afternoon. After her now-ex employee told her ‘Sorry, but this thing I’ve been looking forward to is finally working out for me,’ she took their apron and put it back on the hanger in the back room, then sat down to do the accounts and see how much longer she could keep the shop open. 

Three hours later, she’s still hoping they would come back and tell her it was a mistake, or that they could handle this job as well as chasing their dream, but it hasn’t happened yet. As Tikki’s stomach grumbles with missed lunch, she reminds herself that she has something to be thankful for: this gives her another way out. It’s one thing, keeping this place open when it’s only her income and fear of the void where her other interests and talents should be on the line, and a different one when it’s that along with half of some student’s rent and the space between their ‘now’ and their ‘future’.

Tikki has run all the number twelve times now. The only answers they give her are ‘you cannot sustain this place alone’ and ‘your scheduled deliveries can be sold out in a month’. A deadline, then, to figure out what to do with her half-finished degree from the Beaux-Arts, her mediocre English, and first-hand but ultimately insufficient experience in the art of confiture-making. She wants to call her parents for advice – or, better yet, curl up in her mother’s lap and sleep, but even if they hadn’t died in the fire like a third of Saintévie seven years ago, she’s past her mid-twenties now and _knows_ this is one of those things where the answer is either within her or doesn’t exist. 

Much as she doesn’t want it to be so, it looks like the latter is the case. She muses upon this odd, unsettling fact as she finally puts her pencil to the side, gathers the papers before her, and shoves them to the corner of her desk. Then, she puts her head in her arms on the wooden table and attempts to get at something resembling peace of mind, or a sliver of rest. The pit-patter of the rain is soothing if nothing else.

The chime of the front-door bells startles her even in the back room, perhaps because she’d put the ‘CLOSED’ sign on before barricading herself there earlier. She stumbles out of her desk chair and takes her apron from the hanger. Tying it around her waist and neck as she shouts out ‘Coming!’ is instinct at this point, and a moment later she is out of the door and in the main shop. She flicks on the lights to illuminate the figure in the doorway, but the light is somehow dimmer than usual. 

“Welcome,” she says, sparing a quick glance upwards: two broken bulbs. _€_ _5-6, so minus a dinner and a–_ “I’m sorry, but we’re closed for the day. Unless you need any urgent help?”

She then takes her first proper look at the man in front of her. Average height; skin, eyes, and hair she can only assume is normally messy but currently wet from the rain, all in the same shade of dark-but-not-quite-brown. 

‘Light black’, she suddenly remembers calling the colour as a child. _He chuckled at that_. 

The man shuffles in the beat-up sneakers she could swear look more familiar than most of the rest of him, head and posture a bit more downcast than she can remember. Suddenly, he straightens up, locks eyes with hers as if challenging her assessment, and puts on a small, supposedly confident grin that, somehow, more than anything else that day, makes her heartache.

“Tikki,” Plagg says as if it is a formal greeting and not a nickname she rarely uses anymore. “It’s been a long time. I’ll cut to the chase here, I assume the shop was closed early for a reason.” His foot is tapping lightly on the welcome mat, as if anxious to pivot towards the door. “I’m looking for a job. I’ve been having a hard time finding one.”

“Malchance strikes again?” she can’t help but quip as if they’re sixteen again and the distance between them really is no larger than the nine meters between the back door she’s trying hard not to gravitate towards and the front one he’s obviously trying very hard not to escape from.

He nods and she thinks she sees a bitterness seep into his smile. _Green apples before they’re ripe._ “Indeed. I happened to stumble upon the Facebook page you have up for this place,” _the one she hasn’t updated in months,_ “and thought to myself: ‘Hey, who better to try than Madame Bonnechance herself?’”

She smiles. It tastes like green apples, too. “Funny, I thought that, given the choice, you’d go for the cheeses.” _You know I was only ever Bonnechance when we were together, you silly old_ ** _mec_**. _Can’t you see this place - can’t you see_ **_I’m_** _at the end of my rope here?_

_Or is this precisely why you’re here?_

He shrugs, and his smile turns into something sheepish which is only just on the other side of _desperate_. “I don’t have a choice. Not really. I don’t think I need to tell you why.”

 _No, indeed._ “Okay,” she says. 

(She has no reason to trust him. She has no reason to forgive him. She has no reason to _not_ do either of these things either, though, not one that makes sense to her anymore.)

“Okay,” she says again to the boy she grew up loving, the one who struck the match that lit her home and disappeared into the ashes. “My last employee just quit today, actually, so there’s a free spot for you. If you really want to take it.” 

_One last chance. I don’t know why. I don’t know what the worse in this situation punishment is: helping you or not._

_And yet, if my luck_ **_does_ ** _increase disproportionately to yours when you’re around, that would still make things worse for you, wouldn’t it, even if I helped you out? But I’m giving you a way out, and this is what it_ **_feels_ ** _like: a way out, not a sign of dismissal._

“I do,” he says, and his smile turns into something almost true, something very definitely grateful, and his eyes show it’s deeper than the lines on his face can tell her. 

Tikki turns around towards the shelves; she can no longer look at him. 

“Well, I’ll see you tomorrow, then?” he says, adding a hesitant beat later: “Unless you need help now.”

“No, tomorrow’s fine,” she mutters, reaching to adjust a random jar on the shelves behind the counter. “Come at around seven.” She hears the pivot on the mat, then, the chimes on the door. “I’ve been thinking of expanding towards cheeses anyway,” she calls, her lie stalling the shutting of the door as she needlessly reaches up to rearrange another jar.

“I think I can _definitely_ be of assistance, then,” Plagg says, something almost like mirth in his voice. _Almost, almost, almost – always the ‘not quite’s with him._ “See you tomorrow, then.”

“See you,” she replies. She waits for the soft shutting of the door, then waits a minute longer: another, before finally stilling her hands before the jars of _confiture_. 

She brings her hands down to eye level, turns her palms, and watches them shake as the rain continues pit-pattering outside.

* * *

Tikki throws her blanket off with rather undeserved violence and rather unnatural energy given the time _(almost four in the morning, but an all-nighter never feels tiring if it’s driven by fear, does it?),_ yet props herself up on the bed slowly, deliberately, calculating how many things she can get done before he comes. 

She springs up, then, goes through all of her usual morning routine – bathroom, breakfast, number crunch, sweep – but time flows somehow both faster and slower than usual, like she’s switched onto hyper-speed but everything around her is dragging on as a result. She takes all of the jars off of the shelves in the main area of the shop – every single one of them, and dusts nooks nobody will ever come close enough to look at, and then she polishes the jars themselves, too, and when they’re back in their designated places (or not quite _back_ , seeing as she has rearranged them by...some scheme that doubtlessly made sense when she started, she is sure, but the important thing is it _feels_ right in the moment), she inspects the floor. Naturally, she notices, about half a million tiny, half-invisible stains she’s sure weren’t there yesterday, and then she scrubs and she mops and she–

– _it’s half-past six,_ she realises. _It’s almost_ ** _time._ **

(She regrets it. Of course she regrets it: yesterday she got blinded by the image of the boy she used to know, the one who lived on the dairy farm just outside of Saintévie with his dad and their workers and no siblings and thus no friends to speak of at all, not until he’d met _her_ and _the rest of them,_ at least. After that, summers in the fields had turned into autumns in the classroom, which turned into cards she never gave him for Valentine’s day and a box of chocolates she never received but which Trixx had _sworn_ they’d seen in Plagg’s school bag with Tikki’s name written in his illegible, ugly scrawl on top, the one she knew so well because they’d done all of their homework together and all of their projects, too (and she suspects she would be able to recognise his words, written or spoken, by the curve of a letter or the murmur of a sound anywhere, anytime, _forever)_.

But that boy had slipped away after she’d left for university, even though she’d promised herself she wouldn’t let him. He was always a shadow, though, and they’d all told him as much once and he’d jokingly replied that there was only one sun he’d ever want to be cast off from but wouldn’t tell them which, and it hurts her to think he might have meant– 

_Maybe shadows are the burns suns never get to inflict upon the land,_ Tikki thinks, _but if they have no sun to follow their tendrils turn into annihilating flames._

**_Maybe this is why the fire started.)_ **

Tikki dumps the mop and the bucket in a corner of her bathroom and wrangles and washes and wrangles the cloth she’d used for scrubbing at her sink, puts it on the dryer, then lets her hands rest under the cool water of the tap for a moment (it stings a bit, she scrubbed too hard and the pads opposite her knuckles on the inside of her palm hurt) before leaning in and washing off her face, too, like it would help to wash off her thoughts. 

She doesn’t want to face him yet. 

Tikki heads downstairs and finds that she’s left her apron in the main shop area. She wants to be in the back when Plagg comes in, but she needs to keep it together when he does, she needs to seem like she has been keeping it together all along, and for some reason not having her apron on feels like going into battle naked. 

She opens the door to the main area at the same time Plagg knocks on the front one, _and wow, isn’t that just synchronicity at its finest?_ she thinks as she gives him a perfunctory smile while opening the door and muttering “Bonjour”, then turns to rush without rushing to _put the apron on already._

“Good morning,” he says from behind her. She turns around to look at him _(leaving your back open is never a good idea)_ and struggles with tying the knot at the back of her waist. He doesn’t offer to help, keeping his hands in his pockets, posture mostly relaxed, if hinting at some kind of exhaustion _(lack of sleep, too?)_ and she is grateful for that.

Tikki glances at the clock over his head. _6:42_. “You’re a little early,” she says, tries for a teasing smirk, but she can feel that there’s a bit more of an edge to it for that. “Seven gives plenty of time before the shop opens.” She can feel the accusation in her tone, and it’s not the one she wants to voice, but she couldn’t even begin to formulate the other one, so she stays silent after that.

Plagg tilts his head a bit in that cattish sort of _I’m lying in the sun and you’re disturbing my peace_ kind of way, except that his holds no accusation but rather, she thinks, a hint of more exhaustion than his previous position did. He shrugs, then, and tries for a small grin-that-will-forever-be-impish-no-matter-how-old-he-gets: “I thought it would take me more time to get here by foot than it did. Won’t happen again, I know you probably live above this shop, wouldn’t want to disturb you too early in the morning.”

Tikki sighs in relief and slackens a bit internally. _At least we’re on the same page regarding distance._

“How much time _did_ it take you?”

“Around forty minutes.”

 _Still living in the city, then, which is...surprising._ She hadn’t tracked his trial beyond the headlines and whatever scraps the others happened to drop around her (they almost never brought it up; she think she understood why), but from what she knows of Parisian landlords, _incendie involontaire avec plusieurs victimes_ would probably turn off most of the ones who _are_ desperate for money, and the rest…

(There is a corner of her heart, one she hasn’t paid any attention to in years, that suddenly lets out the faintest of whispers that nevertheless jolts her awake: _it was an accident, it’s not his fault,_ **_he doesn’t deserve this,_ ** and there’s another corner that _knows_ that one (or both) of the latter statements is false, but she doesn’t want to think about which one.)

Tikki nods towards the back and turns around without seeing if he’s following her. “Come on, then. I’ll show you the ropes.”

“Right,” she hears him say. There is a thoughtful pause after that, and then: “I know you probably weren’t being serious yesterday...but _would you_ expand to cheeses?”

The question halts her in her steps. Although he doesn’t slam into her, she can feel his surprised breath on the back of her head and it’s somehow enough to throw her off completely. Tikki stands there, thinking, _trying to think but instead focused on his breathing,_ until she says maybe the first honest thing she’s told him in the past seven years: 

“I don’t know, Plagg. I need some time...” _to consider it,_ she means to say but trails off, and starts towards the table in the ‘office’ again.

“Okay,” he says, calm, casual, and she _knows_ he understands. 

(It’s funny how some things never change.)

* * *

Plagg was always a quick learner once his interest was piqued. 

Tikki isn’t surprised at seeing how quickly they breeze through things, not exactly. She feels as if she’s relearning her own muscle memory as she watches him nod, gaze intent, entirely focused on what she’s saying, like he’s a movement she mastered long ago and is just now doing again. He asks her questions about important details he could have gone a week or two without knowing and she knows he’s planning to stay. 

But there is nothing to wonder at, she supposes: though his clothes are clean and mostly presentable (or at least without rips and holes), they are visibly worn, and the five o’clock shade on his face can only be from saving on shaving cream _(unless he’s stopped despising having so much as a hair on his chin in the past seven years;_ **_people change, Tikki_ ** _)_. 

If she remembers correctly, he’s been free for around three years now, but the likelihood of him getting anything more than a menial job is low, and with his father subsisting on a state pension after his work accident, it’s only natural he’d be excited – _this is probably the first real job he’s had after prison with the prospects of being long-term–_

Tikki halts in the middle of her thought process as she’s rifling through some cabinets to find out the necessary forms for him to fill in.

The notion that he would be staying, really, permanently situating himself in her life again, had been accepted in the back of her head so naturally, so unobtrusively, as if it was the only expected outcome. As if everything was just as it was before, when being around each other was such a quotidian matter they practically had one presence and not two.

He’s in the main shop area, so she takes a moment to rest her forehead against the top of the drawer as she crouches over it, and _breathe._

A ring of a bell, then, and a voice just as clear. “Ti–oh, hello! Are you a new employee of Tikki’s?”

Tikki can _see_ the amused smile on Plagg’s face as she practically jumps up and hastens towards the shop. “Yes. My name is Plagg, and you are…?”

“Marinette,” the girl says, and Tikki walks in just in time to see them shake hands. Marinette looks at her and her smile brightens just a little bit more. The one that settles on Tikki’s face is the most natural one she’s had all morning. 

“Tikki!” Marinette exclaims and comes to give her a hug. Tikki gladly obliges. “Good morning, Mari.” She can’t help but soften at the sight of the girl, letting her hand instinctively fly up to ruffle her hair. “Here for the jars you forgot on Wednesday?”

“Yep. Sorry, couldn’t come earlier because of school and projects, and my parents had some evening stuff and couldn’t take care of it either.”

“It’s not a problem. You know you’re always welcome here.” She eyes Plagg over Marinette’s head. “This is the daughter of one of the bakeries we service, _Tom & Sabine’s. _”

“Ah, our most valued enterprise customer? I should have guessed,” he smirks, echoing Tikki’s words from earlier.

“Please, Plagg. We are professionals. We do not play favourites,” she replies, automatically, effortlessly, as Marinette giggles beside her. And he rolls his eyes with seemingly as much ease, but she can see his right foot shuffling again, and she knows they both know this is all play-acting of sorts, proper improv except they’ve somehow already memorised their lines. 

(Or relearnt them. Steps to a forgotten dance.)

Tikki goes behind the counter and reaches under it, pulling out all three jars of _confiture de lait_ from where she’d hidden them in a corner. “Just these three, right?”

“Just these, yes. We’re experimenting with new pastry flavours,” Marinette says, turning to Plagg. ”See, we are not only _your_ best customers, but also _the_ best bakery in all of Paris.” She puffs her chest at that in mock haughtiness.

“Oh, really?” replies _the boy_ _who invented posturing_. “Well, I don’t know about that, _petite._ You’ll have to bring some samples ‘round next time, and then we’ll see.”

Marinette huffs at being called _little one,_ but the challenging glint in her eyes is clear as she starts gathering the jars in the bag she’s brought. “You’re on. Prepare to be blown away next time I come here!”

Plagg chuckles good-naturedly. “Will do. See you next time, kid.”

Marinette rolls her eyes, but grins nonetheless. “Yeah. See you! You too, Tikki!” she says, swooping in for another quick hug and then bolting out of the door. 

The bells chime behind her.

“She’s very shy usually, you know,” Tikki finds herself saying. “Has a thing about meeting strangers despite being very much at the front-line of everything. Class president, always solving people’s problems and all that.” 

She doesn’t know why she keeps talking, but Plagg is looking at her...not quite as intently as he did before, but with the same amount of focus. 

“She wants to be a fashion designer when she grows up. She’s very talented, really, even won a hat-designing contest recently by some big-name in the industry. The boy she designed it for was apparently _très mignon._ ” 

Tikki presses her lips firmly against each other after that. 

Plagg nods and smiles at her, and it feels a little bit more sincere than before, too, a little bit softer. “Yeah. She does seem like a good kid.”

 _You would know, wouldn’t you?_ “The best,” Tikki says, biting her tongue. She doesn’t want to know where voicing the former remark would leave them.

Marinette is not just good. She _sees_ good wherever she goes, quite literally mines it out of other people. Tikki used to work as her tutor when she’d first come to Paris, before she’d dropped out of university to open up a confiture shop with the small inheritance she got from her parents’ life insurance and possessions. She’s been one of the girl’s closest confidants for years, was practically an honorary sister, and she is sure she’s a better person for it.

But Marinette assured her once that, if she was the type of person who could see and uncover the good in things, Tikki was one of the people who could _create_ it. She cited the worlds in the art and the stories Tikki still, occasionally, made and wrote, and the volunteering initiatives she _used to_ spearhead, and a few tiny things that had just made an impression on her in the way her friend existed in the world.

Tikki still isn’t sure where the girl had gotten that idea in her head, though, and looking at the boy she used to know and seeing the young man she doesn’t, she doubts that there’s a happy ending she can ‘create’ out of this.

 _But maybe,_ she thinks, stops, because Plagg is still shuffling his feet, hands in pockets probably playing with spare change _(ever the restless one),_ looking at her and waiting for directions, for a sign, for _something._

But maybe she _is_ as lucky as people used to say she is. And maybe this is a sign that she should try, because _maybe–_

–maybe she’s not alone in thinking about it. 

Tikki claps her hands, then, and sees him nearly jump at the sound. She sings a little to chirpily _(a false step, a beat out, but still–)_ when she says “Come on, now, we have work to do,” but she can swear the reflexive smile he responds with is a bit more untamed as well as the bells chime another customer behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lack of Human!Kwami AUs I saw, so I made my own.
> 
> This is a fic I've had in the works for _months_ now and I'm so glad I'm finally able to share it with the world! I'm looking forward a lot to any feedback you may have on it, whether here or on [Tumblr.](https://noirshitsuji.tumblr.com/)
> 
> I'm incredibly grateful to [Elle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady3ellewrites/pseuds/Lady3ellewrites) for betaing this and being an incredible consultant on all things French! Do check her out as well.
> 
> (Saintévie is based on [Vimoutiers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vimoutiers), a real-life French town in Normandy, the land of camembert cheese.)


	2. as if i'm not even close

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _You wouldn’t listen anyway, would you? You’d still do what you want, help him as you always do – brave, responsible, **honourable Tikki,** high on her white horse because she can somehow forgive the person who ruined all of our lives. Real heroic, honestly._

Tikki can find no fault in the way Plagg sorts the money in the counter – quickly but carefully, bill by bill and coin by coin after each customer. There is no cutting corners when it’s his turn to sweep or mop the main area, either; his coffee never grows cold in the back room, staying there for half a day before being thrown out. (He drinks it with a sort of relish she remembers feeling in her student days; she doesn’t know if he has the money to sustain a domestic warm-drink habit of any kind unless a kettle was already available wherever he’s staying, so until his first paycheck, she will continue making it for him every morning.) The mug is always on the drying rack before opening time and in its designated cupboard before six in the afternoon, when she lets him off a little early, finishing the evening shift alone. 

He doesn’t ask her to stay longer, which is also something she can only be grateful for. While working, though, he will occasionally offer to help her if he happens to notice her struggling. Sometimes, she’ll say: “Yes, thank you, it’s on the top of the shelf,”; other times – “No, we’re basically the same height, you won’t have much more success than I will. I’ll manage.”

And while Tikki’s looking for faults in his manner, Plagg only shrugs when confronted with the idiosyncrasies in hers, not questioning any of them. 

_Funny that it feels like I’m the one being let off the hook despite him being the one on the rope,_ she thinks, _although I suppose my silence on certain questions has loosened the noose around his throat, too._

He is perfectly polite to everyone who comes in, a special sort of gleam in his eyes when the customer (or the person accompanying them) happens to be under the age of fifteen. He asks her if he can use some of the _confiture de lait_ to make the candy they used to love as kids to offer it to people; she agrees. (He suggests that she take away from his salary for that; she doesn’t). 

When she catches him making them the morning of the end of his first week, Tikki has to leave the room because he is muttering her mother’s recipe under his breath, and she doesn’t come back in until she is sure he’s finished. The _bonbons_ come out perfectly, and the look in his eyes when he brings them out makes her heart stutter in a way she’d forgotten it could. 

The first kid to try them is a Senegalese tourist whose mother seems a bit put-off by Plagg’s slightly tattered looks, but when her child’s eyes bulge from the sweet’s delicacy and Plagg offers her one, too, she returns his smile – hesitantly, at first, until she, too, tries the candy and brightens up. 

Tikki could say she feels satisfied with the matter because that woman is the first, but not the last that day, to buy more _confitures_ than the average customer. Revenue is revenue and Tikki is a business owner; it’s all about the numbers, customer satisfaction, _TripAdvisor_ reviews, etcetera. She’s not thinking of any of that, though, not when she sees the light in Plagg’s eyes after each successive kid asks for another piece (“Okay, just for you,” he hushes for the seventh time in a row), not when she knows what her mother would think about so many people appreciating her recipe, not when–

–not when her own heart tells her _lying to yourself is useless._

 _He is ripped seams and I am slightly dulled but still cutting edges_ , she thinks as she looks at his back while he takes off his apron. _Maybe we shouldn’t come so close together,_ but even if Tikki hadn’t spent so much time bandaging Marinette’s fingers from needle pricks and scissors’ cuts, she’d still know that every piece of fabric needs to be cut before it can become clothing. And most pieces of clothing, if they are to be remade, need to have their holes filled in with other parts.

Which is not to say she entertains notions of ‘fixing’ Plagg, but he needs scissors as much as she needs cloth, _so that leaves us somewhere in the vicinity of symbiosis,_ she muses as they bid each other ‘Goodnight’.

( _Or dependency,_ her mind supplies.)

* * *

The café Trixx has chosen for their ‘monthly’ meet-up is the polar opposite of what you’d associate with them as a person – lighting that is both soft and pale, leather couches, low glass tables on wooden legs on faded, carpeted floors, with pastel colors and floral patterns on the walls. There is, objectively, a lack of coherence with their usual aesthetic, but it fits them well, in a sense. 

_Despite all of us growing up in the same place, one where all roots run deep, we are very different people,_ Tikki muses as she settles into a seat opposite Mullo, the other girl smiling at her as they wait for Sass and Wayzz to bring their drinks. _Mullo matches the pastels of this place; Wayzz is in the wood; Sass is the glass; I am the carpet; and Trixx...well, they’re the unpredictability, the heterogeneity, the incoherence that somehow makes sense._

Tikki doesn’t think it was necessarily the fire burning away at their roots that caused these differences to emerge; it only strengthened them, made them prominent–center-stage–so much so that it is only recently that these meetings have become bimonthly (before that they were monthly; before that – biannual; before that – annual; before that... _they weren’t anything remarkable, actually_ ). Slowly, shyly, they rewove their bonds to one another through silently mourning, over steaming cups of coffee and tea, the people and the place they’ve lost despite the town still standing – until the loss freed them. It gave Trixx the power to tell their parents exactly what ‘I don’t dress like a girl because _I don’t feel like it’_ actually means, Wayzz – to choose academia over cider-making, Mullo – to start caring for herself as her siblings matured quicker than was usual, and Sass to transform his arrogance ( _born of fear,_ Tikki’s always thought) into the self-assured calm of someone who has actually been through hell and knows they can survive it.

It wasn’t the way they would have chosen for these things to happen, Tikki is sure of that, just as she is sure that if they could go back in time and prevent it, everybody would press the button, pull the lever, step into the portal in a heartbeat.

But she also knows – or, okay, strongly suspects, because there are questions one should never ask – that she is one of the few who regularly mourn the impossibility of the latter. 

( _Everyone else moved on, and I’m the only one still stuck there, in the mud, in the fields where we used to play as kids._

 _Well, me and–_ )

Tikki snaps out of her trance the moment Wayzz puts her mug in front of her, and mutters a distracted “Thank you”. As the guys settle down, she smiles sheepishly at Mullo, _God I am so sorry I spaced out,_ and the smile of the other girl widens and softens just a bit ( _“It’s fine, I understand.”_ ), allowing Tikki to relax, pick up her mug and lean back into her seat. She sips a bit, but it is too hot. Putting the mug on the table, she props her arms on the armrests at the elbows, and finally focuses on her friends.

“When did you say Trixx is going to arrive?” she asks, turning to Wayzz first.

He quickly checks his phone again before replying to her; _diligent as always._ “They texted me ten minutes ago saying their work was running on, so will probably be here in...half an hour?”

Tikki nods, shifting a bit in her seat as she moves her right thumb across the rim of the mug. _Thirty minutes of peace before Vic ‘I can make God tell me all of his secrets’ Mael takes one look at me and demands to know what’s wrong. Right._

She can see Sass looking at her from the corner of her eye, head slightly tilted. Wayzz is drinking his coffee, body turned to her but listening otherwise intently to Mullo about her work in the social services. _None of these three will ask. Thanks, everyone._

So Tikki nods and asks questions and doesn’t volunteer information, not yet, but she doesn’t try and offer insight, either (she lost that very-annoying-to-strangers-but-quite-easily-gotten-used-to habit several years ago). Sass is his usual quiet self unless he sees an opportunity for a wordplay joke, and all is well until Tikki hears the door open approximately forty-five minutes later and she knows–

“Hello, all, sorry I’m late!” Trixx says, dropping their bag in the free chair next to Wayzz and leaning in to give him a quick kiss on the cheek. “Be back in a sec’,” they say as they head to order at the counter, but Mullo finishes what she has to say and they all collectively proceed to sip at their drinks.

Tikki can feel a chill run down her spine; _they may not be the executioner themself, but the jury can be just as ruthless._

“Alright,” Trixx says, moving their bag off from the chair and setting their mocha on the table, clasping their hands and leaning over their knees. “What’s up, all?” They ask, scanning all the faces around them in turn. Wayzz smiles, softly, Mullo shakes her mug in a cheery toast, Sass sips his coffee–

–and so does Tikki, but Trixx’s eyes zone in on her nonetheless. _Of course they do._

 _(In another life,_ Tikki thinks, _that intuition is what makes them a motivational speaker or a guru or a monk, not a police detective._

 _But in that life, the fire never happened,_ and oh, Tikki mourns the impossibility of the button, the lever, the portal– _)_

“How’s the shop, Tikki?” Trixx asks, raising their drink to their face, eyes intent on hers.

Tikki lowers her gaze.“The shop’s fine.” _Rip the band-aid off._ “The last student employee I had left,” she forces, stops, lets both of her thumbs skitter across the edges of her empty mug.

“Oh?” Trixx replies, and Tikki looks up. Their face is blank. 

_Now._ “Got the vacancy filled on the same day, though,” she says. _Now, Tiphaine,_ **now**. “Plagg showed up, asking for a job, heard about the shop–”

Trixx does not slam their mug on the table, not precisely, probably because it _is_ made of brittle material, but there is enough clatter that Tikki can see several heads turn around for a second before quickly turning back. 

She’s looking at Trixx, but not quite; she’s sort of fixated on a peony on the wallpaper on the wall behind them, to the left of their face. 

She’s quite aware of what their expression is, though. “Why? _”_ Trixx asks, voice ringing with strange hollowness. Tikki says nothing. Nobody else does, either.

_(We all know that is a rhetorical question.)_

“Okay,” they say after a moment of silence, picking up their mug with the type of forced calm that takes every ounce of strength not to hurl an object across a room. “Does anybody else have any _achievements_ to add?” Their voice is stone-cold; _storm, stay put away–”_ unless Tikki is keen on updating us on what other pieces of shit she happened to step in and then didn’t clean off.”

Tikki’s thumbs still. She looks Trixx in the face, then. “Let it out,” she says, shoves whatever she feels (she dares not analyse it) at the back of her head, because this is one of her oldest friends who _hates_ these ripped seams she _needs_ to cut, and they are adults, _damnit_ , they will talk it out if it kills them.

Trixx stills, too, and is terribly silent for a long, long moment. Wayzz leans back into his seat and they take a look at him. He gazes back, expression, at least to Tikki, unreadable. Mullo gets up and mutters something about getting herself something sweet, Sass requests a _brioche_ , and Tikki stays silent.

Finally, Trixx looks away from their boyfriend, closes their eyes, takes a few deep, deep breaths, and when they finally turn to Tikki again, she can see her exhaustion mirrored there.

“No,” they say, quietly, as the brioche Mullo puts in front of Sass _clanks_ against the table. “I will not. There wouldn’t be a point, would there, even if it helped me?” they phrase it as a question, but their smile cuts off the wider limits of their line of thought. _You wouldn’t listen anyway, would you? You’d still do what you want, help him as you always do – brave, responsible,_ **honourable Tikki** , high on her white horse because she can somehow forgive the person who ruined all of our lives. Real heroic, honestly.

“I don’t know about that,” Tikki says, responding more to the accusation she nevertheless hears than Trixx’s actual words, “if it helps you, I say there _is_ a point in doing it. _I_ don’t need to hear it, you understand. I am crystal _clear–_ ” and at this, she is the one who puts her mug maybe a tad more forcefully on the table than necessary, but still with relative restraint, and then leans back in her chair, “–on why I did what I did, why I could’ve not or I _should've_ not,” _because one of us_ **_did_ ** _lose their family in the fire, and they are the one who will get to decide how to deal with that,_ “but if there’s anything you want to say about that, I’m here to hear it.”

Trixx swallows and Tikki knows she’s made her point. They take a chug from their mocha and then try another route. “No, I’m good,” pause. “So...what’s up with him?”

 _Thank you._ “As an employee, he’s fine. As diligent as always, I guess,” she shoots a look at Mullo and Sass. The former nods encouragingly; the latter only stares straight back at her. “No idea about his personal life, it’s only been a few days and we haven’t seen each other in years, so can’t really ask him much about that directly. I _did_ tell him we may or may not expand into dairy products in the future, though, so I expect his enthusiasm to rise quickly,” she finishes, holding Sass’s stare.

“Ah, that would do it, wouldn’t it,” Wayzz says, and she turns to see him put his hands behind his neck. “Be careful how much free range you give him with that, though, or soon your entire shop will smell like Camembert.”

“Or Brie, since we’re in Ile-de-France,” Sass replies. “It could all go very horri _brie,”_ he finally cracks a smile at that. Tikki can feel seven years' worth of weight slide off her chest for just the briefest of moments, then, as Trixx scoffs at the joke and Mullo giggles. “God, I hope I _never_ have to be in the same room as you and Plagg again,” the latter says, shooting a glance at Trixx. “I think his puns are a bigger threat than the prospect of just smelling Camembert everywhere.”

Trixx shakes their head, but there are faint cracks in their armour Tikki wouldn’t be able to mistake for anything else if she tried (she has gaps in hers in the same places), so she carries on with the conversation, lets Wayzz switch to another topic or several, drags Sass into a debate about a new film that’s come out (Trixx pipes in with an opinion, too, at one point). When the time comes to go, Tikki walks Mullo to her flat on her way back to the shop, only to receive a quick kiss on the cheek and a “Stay strong” before Mullo goes in.

Tikki brings up her hand to wave at her back before clutching her fist, hanging her head low, and falling apart. She cries for the first time in years, letting the city see and hear her as she heads home, and doesn’t think about anything at all as she does so.

* * *

Tikki can see the dust particles in the sunset light dancing around Plagg as he sweeps the shop front. He hums a soft melody that strikes her as a ‘should-be-familiar’ but that she cannot place. She does not ask, and neither does she outright stare at the way the orange tints Plagg’s dark hair, only allowing herself to sneak glances up from the bills she is counting at the till. _76, 81, 91–_

“So, how was yesterday with Mullo and the others?” he asks, casually, and Tikki’s hand stops in mid-air.

 _This is the first question that’s essentially about me he’s asked._ ‘Interesting’ is not the word she’s looking for, but it’s the only one she’s got to describe this feeling. 

“It was nice,” she says, closes her mouth, and then decides that she can offer him a bit more normalcy than that, that she still has _a bit more left to give._ ”Mullo told us some stories from her work – she’s in social care, specialises in children’s cases,” he nods along, back still to her and for a second she tricks herself into thinking that he actually cares. “Trixx came a bit later; they got caught up in some work at the police station, apparently.”

Plagg turns around, then, and rests his hands on the broom. “They’re finally out, then?” he says, and Tikki’s sure they both know that’s not the questions he wants to ask, _that’s not the part of that sentence he cares about–_

“To some people,” she replies. “Their family, us, their other friends. I’m not sure about the police force. I’m not sure how close they are with the people there. It’s...well, not a _new_ development – Trixx did pursue their education in the area – but, ah, they’re very passionate and focused on the job itself, so...” _Clarity within unspoken constraints is the only mercy I can offer you._

“Good to know,” he mutters, then lifts the broom up in his right hand and heads to the back room. “And Wayzz and... Sass was the other one there?” 

“Sass, yeah. He’s doing well in psychotherapy. As a psychiatrist, that is, not as a patient.,” Tikki says, hearing a snort from the other room. “As for Wayzz...he got into artifact restoration after a PhD in Fine Art. Currently working on a project in the Louvre.”

She can hear Plagg hum. She hesitates without knowing why (she knows exactly why) before voicing the next bit a little louder _(because he won’t hear me otherwise, though I’m not sure what I’m trying to say with this, who I’m trying to_ ** _blame_ ** _)_. “He and Trixx are together now,” she finishes. “Finally,” she then tacks on, for old times’ sake, a desperate attempt to revive a joke nearly a decade past its expiration date.

The ensuing silence is the loudest any of their conversations has ever gotten, she thinks, but is lucky in that it doesn’t last long; she finishes counting up the last five bills in her hands – _96, 111, 116, 131, 136_ – and Plagg emerges from the back just as she’s written the final sum down in her notepad, his bag slung over his right shoulder, apron gone, hair seemingly more mussed-up than before, as if he’d dragged his hands through it. 

“That’s nice,” he says. giving her a sly, cheery smile that somehow registers as both fake and sincere at the same time. “Good that they finally got it together.”

And he pauses, then, and she thinks _I don’t care if it’s mercy or if it’s fear, please don’t–_

“I wonder if that means that you were the one who won that bet we made,” he muses, scratching his chin with his hand, but doesn’t give her time to reply. “‘Cause you _technically_ said it would happen after Trixx’s 18th.”

He shrugs and turns around, then, and the only thing running through her mind is _thankgodthankgodthankgod_ – “Well, anyway – glad to hear everybody’s doing alright. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Goodnight, Plagg,” she replies automatically, answering his backwards wave with one of her own. 

The bells of the door chime to the tune of _they used to joke about us in that way, too, do you remember?_ and, as she stands up, the chair screeches to _I think they even forewent the bet in our case because they were so sure we were already together_ and the dust no longer looks like it dances, rather it is falling down, down, down–

– _and isn’t that always fun until you hit the ground?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last line shamelessly taken from the titular song.
> 
> This chapter was once again betaed by the wonderful [Elle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady3ellewrites/pseuds/Lady3ellewrites), go check her out!
> 
> I forgot to mention it previously, but the update schedule for this story is once every three weeks. Please let me know what you think about it in the meantime in the comments, and you can also find me [here](https://noirshitsuji.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr.


	3. we didn't think too much this time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Plagg finds a runaway Adrien and brings him to the shop; Tikki tries to settle into her own skin.

And then the night rolls in, a black (dark blue, or does it make a difference?) carpet streaming through the streets, but there are no spikes of silver from the stars tonight, no moon to shine a light upon Paris.

 _Or maybe I just can’t see them,_ thinks Tikki, sitting down at the bottom of the stairs leading up to her apartment above the shop. She’s been sitting here for a while now, trying to calm her heartbeat through a breathing exercise _– one, two, three, in, one, two, three, out,_ but that’s still too fast, _it should be more like oooooone, twooooo, threeeeeeee, iiiiiiiiinnnnnn –_ and so on, the lady from the _Centre Médico-Psychologique_ had said, _because how can you mend your heart if you don’t slow it down enough to do the healing,_ and Tikki had wanted to reply then that _if she slowed it down enough it wouldn’t matter either way–_

Tikki is sitting at the bottom of the stairs, and there are no windows through which to see the night outside, but it is dark, she is sure; what else could it be?

....Eventually, she stands up – or, rather, _hunches up enough_ – to climb up the stairs. Her mind has been swimming with memories for the past however-long-since-Plagg-left and it won’t stop and she _can’t stop,_ but she still turns her body towards the kitchen. Everything from opening the door to picking the ready-meal for the night (she did cook sometimes, but a lot of her nights were ones like these; nights when she was too tired, or too busy, or too _little_ to cook, so she kept a solid stock in her freezer) to the heating it to the eating it to the throwing out the rubbish of it and washing off the fork (she eats directly from the box; she doesn’t know what she’s just eaten, but it doesn’t matter so long as there are no dishes to do) to the putting the fork back in the drawer is mechanical, a performance of self-care that her mind is telling her her body _needs_ even if she doesn’t care enough, hard-wired instincts for preservation, counter-intuitive as they currently feel, kicking in. So is the washing of her face and her teeth afterwards (but she doesn’t have the strength for a shower tonight) and so is the careful setting of her alarm for the following morning (though everything she wants at that moment is to smash her phone against the wall), but Tikki gets through it the same way she’s gotten through nearly every single day of the past seven years – methodically, calmly, as if there isn’t an elephant in the room breathing down her neck, as if every fiber of her body isn’t waiting for it to crash onto her – and, once again, she is alive at the end of it.

The thoughts and the images (for calling them memories _stings_ ) are still there, but so is her prescription, and Tikki falls asleep. It is not restful.

(But it has to be enough.)

* * *

The next day brings a storm with it – or rather, a calm but chilly September morning brings a more-scruffed-up-than-usual Plagg in with the wind that makes the bells at the front door chime just a little bit more; and it’s not his clothes or the bags on his face or the five-o-clock shade that reminds her of a storm, no, it’s the steering of his dark, dark eyes, the kind of thing that only ever happened when they were younger when he would go very, very quiet. For all his chaos, he controlled himself better than most people Tikki knew at that point – _and that’s just another thing that hasn’t changed, isn’t it?_ – and she’s long forgotten how she first learned _not_ to touch that hot pot when she saw it – _or maybe it was just instinct leading her from the beginning, just like with everything else between them_ – but she doesn’t have to wonder too long what its source is.

Because as Plagg swings the door open, comes in, and stands in the front of the shop, shaking off his jacket with more force than strictly necessary ( _it was me who taught you how to release tension like that, wasn’t it?_ ), a boy steps gingerly onto the threshold, both hands gripping the bag he has slung over his shoulder tightly, his eyes glancing at hers for the briefest of seconds before going back to Plagg’s back, seemingly just as much holding onto him as the boy’s hands are onto his bag. _One lifeline, two lifelines...shit._

“Good morning,” Tikki says, and, appropriately, notices the sky darkening even more; _rain coming on any moment now._

“Good morning,” the boy replies, bowing his head slightly. He’s nearly Plagg’s height, but he seems to be in his early teens, blond hair still not quite dark enough with age, green eyes lively though with bags under them–

– _wait._

“Adrien, this is my boss, Tikki.” Something rings cold in her at that; it’s not disappointment, it’s just hitting another brick in an already familiar wall. Plagg finally looks at her properly, then, and:

“Tikki, this is Adrien–”

_–and this is Plagg, the true one, the fire to her earth, the one that always came when someone managed to get to him–_

“–who is out on the street because–” he stops. Shuts his mouth tightly, as if forcing himself to obtain some degree of self-control they both know he’s never had. _The kid is already in, Plagg,_ Tikki thinks as she looks at the way the boy is hunched over himself, his face looking like it’s trying to contort itself into a semblance of a polite smile without a healthy dose of heartbreak in it, _and we both know you’re too fucking soft–_

 _–_ and she has brief flashes, then, of bullies getting pranked into never doing anything ever again, of searching for hours for Trixx’ favourite doll, of chocolates she never saw but knew were for her–

– _just as well as we do that I love tragedies too fucking_ _much for it to be healthy._

(That must be the only explanation for why she’s taking on all the charity cases, right?)

“Okay. Nice to meet you, Adrien,” she smiles as she walks over to the kid and holds out her hand, waiting patiently for him to awkwardly size her up once again before attempting another polite smile and offering her his. Tikki thinks she can feel strap burn on his palm and, although it is ironic, she is the true adult in that room with her own business and her superior age and her socially-acquired tenderness, and so the next thing she says is:

“Come sit down in the back. We still have time before opening; I’ll make some tea.”

–and this is exactly what her mother would do, she knows, and Tikki feels a little flame light up inside her at the thought; the contrast with how she felt about Plagg making the bonbons before shocks her. Maybe it’s because this time, she is the one invoking the past. It might not be much of a legacy, being the daughter of a dead countryside teacher and confiture-maker, but it’s hers and for some reason, she feels a bit more alive as she sees it working in the way Adrien’s shoulders relax and his face loses the artificial grin for the small, scared, thankful smile. There’s also the way Plagg looks at her like he’s just remembered some part of their muscle memory, too, the part where she was always the person with all the answers, and Tikki feels strange, being seen as holding that much power–

–but for the first time in _years,_ she doesn’t feel like an impostor regarding the responsibility that comes with it.

Tikki turns around and gestures for Adrien to follow her with another smile, heading for the back area. Once in, she pulls him up a chair and goes to start the kettle.

“Adrien, is there any type of tea you prefer?” she asks, pulling out all the boxes of Lipton they have. “We have mint, lemon, thyme...” and green and black tea, but his slight trembling and shifting eyes _(no wonder Plagg picked him up)_ are not giving any indication that he’d benefit from a shot of caffeine in his blood. 

“Mint, please,” he says. His voice, while timid, sounds surprisingly controlled, and Tikki turns to glance at him just in time to see Plagg open up a box of biscuits and pour some on a plate in the centre of the table – which, coincidentally, is right in front of Adrien. His eyebrows have furrowed, but the real anger is hidden in the careful movement of his hands as he places the box slowly back on the table and looks up at her. “Do you need help with that?” he asks.

“No, don’t worry about it,” she replies as she turns back around to pour water into the kettle. But as she puts it on to heat up, he nevertheless comes to her periphery, leaning upright against a corner of the kitchen island, and Tikki realises that somehow these two meters between them are the closest they’ve been to each other in the past few weeks. He’s helped her clean the main area of the shop, and argue with less-than-polite customers, and even clean dishes, but this is the first proper time they’ve really been on the same side since reuniting. 

Tikki pushes away the memories as she pulls out three cups, places bags in them (two mint and one thyme) and reaches into another cupboard for the sweetener. “Adrien, would you like some honey in? We also have milk, I think,” she adds, opening the fridge to glance inside. 

“No, thank you,” he says, and Tikki murmurs some automatic reply before pulling out the milk anyway to mix into the thyme tea. She pours a healthy dose of honey into her own cup with mint tea and then carefully picks off just a tiny bit more, enough to cover the tip of the spoon, before mixing it in with the thyme mixture _– this one’s gotta be last, don’t want to get any of that milkiness into anybody else’s mug –_ and then throws the spoon in the sink. She hands the thyme tea to Plagg, who’s been silently looking at Adrien for a couple of minutes now, still very obviously trying _not_ to lose control–

–when he turns to look at her, though, his eyebrows shoot up at the sight of the tea in her hand. “Oh. Thanks, Tikki,” he says, voice _thankful but also confused, too confused and suddenly warm and–_

 _–why is he saying it like_ ** _that?_ ** Tikki blinks at his surprise but moves to take the two cups of mint and take them to the table before she can become too caught up in it. Adrien takes his mug and gives her a grateful smile (and she’s seen all of them, all of the broken pure ones and the purely broken ones, she knows that difference, and her heart breaks for him because _people always end up on one side of that divide, right? and you’ve always been on the nasty one_ ). She returns it on reflex, with maybe a little less light, but no less sincerity as she pulls up a chair across from the young boy who needs her help – _their help, she chastises herself as she sees Plagg take a seat next to her out of the corner of her eye –_ and wraps her hands around her mug and leans forward, ready to listen. 

Adrien is staring at his mug, his smile already gone from his face, and Tikki has the feeling that she should have given him a spoon to stir the liquid around with – a technique her mother had taught her a long time ago to help ‘move her thoughts along the right flow’, as she’d liked to say. At any rate, it might have stopped the soft tapping of fingers on the table – _piano? it’s always been Plagg’s forte, even if he never took it seriously or far enough for it to become a thing on its own,_ but she thinks that she somehow recognises the pattern, _and everything becomes a memory in retrospect, doesn’t it?_ but then Adrien’s hand suddenly stops, laying down on the table. Tikki watches him watch it and doesn’t say a word; neither does Plagg.

“My father’s been... more distant, since my mother disappeared,” Adrien says, hand inching towards his cup. Tikki notes the _more_ as she glances at the stone face next to her. “He’s still grieving, I think, even though it’s been around... nearly two years now. I... it’s been hard, but I’m doing alright. Or at least better than he is, I think.” He sips his tea, eyes downcast. When the mug is set down again, the light reflects from its contents in a way that reminds Tikki, ever so slightly, of a muddy pond in winter and child’s play and– _stop._

She looks up at the same time as Adrien’s eyes lift up to meet hers – leafy green, and suddenly she recognises him, from the photos Marinette sent her from the hat contest. “Your father is Gabriel Agreste,” she says, mouth dry, “the fashion designer?”

“Yes,” he replies, taking another sip. She follows suit. “He–well, you may have heard about some of his... scandals...”

Tikki remembers not seeing Trixx for a month around investigations of women’s claims about their relationships with Gabriel. Then, she remembers the sewing factories in the south of Bangladesh and his unceremonious denial of them mattering and–

She nods, willing herself, once again, to _stop._ This boy – halo not in the weak light reflecting off of his hair so much as in the small gold embers in his eyes – is not that man, not in his posture, not in his smile, and not in his nervous blinks or newly-tapping fingers.

“You told me something, Adrien,” Plagg says, then, moving from his lean against the chair to hunch forward on the table. “You can tell Tikki about it, too. I promise you can trust her.”

Adrien nods, opens his mouth, freezes, closes it. He looks down again, and wraps his hands around the tea, too, the same way that Tikki has, and starts drawing circles with his thumbs on the cup (and it is only then that she catches herself doing that).

“Okay,” Plagg says, slowly, clasping his hands. His mug sits between the two of them, still full. “When I found you in front of the bookshop down the road, you were trying to call a friend, and were very distressed because you couldn’t seem to find the number they’d sent you.” He shuts up, then. Plagg has always liked children, but he’s never _been_ a caretaker, and Tikki thanks him silently for trying as she decides to take it from there.

“Could you tell us how you ended up there, Adrien?” she asks, wondering if she should reach out with her hand – an invitation for intimacy. She doesn’t; his foot has started bouncing off of the floor and his eyes are still shifting. His hands wrap tighter around the cup.

“I couldn’t take it anymore,” he says, raising his cup a third time to his lips and then setting it down; it is empty. “After he–well, he hit me. He’d never done that before, and I–” he stops, swallowing hard, his eyes glassy. Tikki can feel the tension emanating from Plagg beside her; she wants to reach a hand out to him, too, but she knows better than that.

Adrien, meanwhile, is blinking hard and fast; she leans forward on instinct, gently putting her hand over his wrist. He stops blinking, then, and stares at her hand. Tikki thinks she must have overstepped, but he turns his hand over so that his palm is facing upwards, and she takes a moment to consider whether it is a true invitation or not before putting her hand in his and squeezing it.

“I have this friend,” Adrien continues, controlling his voice. He is still staring at her hand like he can't believe anyone would offer him physical affection like that and _Tikki wants to punch that man._ “I met him through this contest my father held, and then we just...kept in touch. His name is Nino. He... I know what they say, about strangers and online people and whatnot, but he’s good. He’s trustworthy and kind and–”

“You don’t need to defend yourself, kid,” Plagg says, ice in his voice. “We’re not here to judge you for anything that’s happened to you.” Tikki nods, pressing her thumb a bit more onto Adrien’s wrist, and begins drawing circles on it; _now, that helps it all flow, just like the cup stirring,_ her mother’s voice echoes in her mind, and she feels a burst of renewed confidence. She notes the name he gives her for later; it sounds familiar. One of Marinette’s friends, perhaps?

“Was Nino the friend you were trying to call?” she asks, finally causing Adrien to look her in the eyes again. 

He nods. “Yes, he–well. I told him about my dad. And he said... he said that the way he’s been treating me is not… is not acceptable. I didn’t want to–I mean, he’s my _father,_ ” he whimpers, rubbing his face with the hand that isn’t holding Tikki’s. “He–he’s cold and he’s distant but he _loves me_ and-and-and I didn’t want to believe it, but Nino warned me it _could_ get physical and that I should _get away from there_ and I didn’t listen–I _couldn’t listen–_ but then he hit me and it felt like–”

Tikki shoves off her chair with as little force as she can as she walks around the side of the small table, hand still holding Adrien’s, who is too preoccupied with trying to tell them what had happened to do anything more than flinch at her sudden movements. A moment later she’s wrapped him up in the type of hug she hasn’t given anyone since the last time she’d seen her mother in the hospital, unconscious from however many painkillers made the agony of third-degree burns go away. It’s the type of hug that can’t be tight and crowding because that was the last thing that person needed, a one-armed clutching motion of the back of the other against one’s chest, head nearly rested on top of theirs.

“–like everything had collapsed in on itself, and I didn’t know what to do except that I could see that it was a red flag–the _last red flag–_ and I couldn’t sleep all night and then I woke up this morning and I packed up my bags and just _left_ because he has an event and had to go with both his secretary and my bodyguard, and I could only think to call Nino, but I got a burner phone so that my father can’t track me and left my own at home without writing down Nino’s number, _stupid_ , and I _can’t_ remember it and-and-and–”

“Adrien, Adrien please listen to me,” Tikki says and he stops in his tracks, body going completely still against hers. She starts taking deep breaths– _ooooooooone, twoooooo, threeeeee, in, ooooooooooone, twooooooo, threeeeeee, out, oooooooone–_ and soon enough, he follows suit, matching his breath precisely to her rhythm.

After a couple of minutes like this, his shaking recedes enough for her to dare speak. “You did nothing wrong, Adrien,” she says, the words tasting like ash in her mouth – not because they are untrue, but because she wants to burn _anything_ and _anyone_ who had made this boy like this, so full of guilt that his _flight instinct was not kicking in properly_. “I need you to realise this. You did nothing wrong; it is not your fault that you ended up in this situation, and whatever happens from here on out is _not_ your fault, either, do you understand me?” He stills even more in her arms. “Adrien,” she says, dropping her voice even further. “I need you to tell me you understand what I’m telling you, and I need you to believe it. _The parent’s behaviour is never the child’s fault._ Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” he replies, hands clutching at her left arm – the one that had come to wrap him up against her chest completely. “Yes, I–I understand. I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologise for,” she replies, softening her voice. A pause, then, and she raises her eyes to find Plagg staring at her. She stares back. 

“Do you know where Nino is studying?” she asks Adrien, not taking her eyes off of her– _off of_ **him**.

“I’m not sure. I only know it’s somewhere around here. I...” he trails off, his hand relaxing against hers. “I think he told me, but I don’t–I can’t–I”

“It’s alright,” Tikki says, hoping to interrupt another guilt spiral, and brings her right hand up to envelop him into a proper hug. She’s never had a sibling, but she thinks she finally understands what Mullo had meant with all these stories of nursing her brothers after they’d had an accident, and somehow that makes her blood boil all over again. 

She’s still looking at Plagg. He quirks an eyebrow up at her, and she finds their unspoken agreement in that moment sort of surreal, like a dream she’d never thought would come true again.

“We’ll find him,” she says, not quite aware of what she’s promising this boy that needs more than whatever she can offer him. “We know someone who studies around here; we’ll ask them and have them ask around, too, and we’ll find him. A Parisian school district is small enough for that. Alright?” she intones, and only then does she raise herself slightly, so as to look down at Adrien’s face. He looks up at her, too, and the gratitude she sees in his eyes nearly overwhelms her to the point of crying herself. “Yes,” he all but chokes out. “Thank you.”

Tikki feels herself smiling with a sort of fondness she doesn’t remember having ever experienced before. “You can stay with me in the meanwhile. This isn’t the grandest place on earth, but it’s warm and fairly cozy, and there’s space for one more mattress in there.”

“Oh, I, uh, wouldn’t want to impose,” Adrien mutters, dropping his hands from around her arms, and she feels that it is time she let go of him, too. As she stands up from her semi-crouch and moves to the other side of the table again, he adds, louder: “I have money on me for a hotel room, I think.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea, kid,” Plagg says, leaning back in his chair again and crossing his arms. “I mean, you can if you’d feel more comfortable or aren’t willing to trust us that much yet – that is completely normal – but your father is a very influential man, and he could find you out very easily through check-in or just contacts and that kind of stuff.”

“Plagg’s right, unfortunately,” Tikki says, clasping her hands and glancing at the man beside her. 

He looks pensively at Adrien for a moment before throwing her a glance that’s somewhere between tense and – _anxious?_ – before saying: “I’m living in a motel, actually. The owner is, ah, an old friend of my father’s, he lets me work shifts there for free lodging,” and the way he is _not_ looking at her is so pointed it might as well have been an apology, of sorts, although Tikki’s not sure what it would be for. “I can ask him to give you a room that stays off the books for a while, at least until we can get the situation with your dad sorted. You can still pay for it. Would you be okay with that?”

Adrien’s hands are around his mug again, his thumb tapping at the faux porcelain surface. “Yes,” he says after a minute, “I think that’s fine.”

Plagg nods. Tikki tries not to stare at him. “Okay, then. Well,” he turns to her, face seemingly clean of any tension, but she can see his shoulders; they’d always had something cattish about them, and the way he is half-bracing himself on the table with his right arm makes him look like he is ready to run. His eyes flip to the clock she knows is behind her head and he says: “It’s ten to eight, which is when the shop opens. Adrien, would you like me to take you to the motel now or…?”

“You can stay here, too,” Tikki adds, anxious not to leave the still very visibly shaken boy alone. She smiles. “There’s, ah, not much entertainment to be had at the back of the shop– but I can bring you some books from upstairs, if you’d like?”

“Oh, I have my own, actually,” he says, reaching for his bag and pulling out what seems to be a physics textbook, muttering something about _stupid_ and _taken this but not the number_. Tikki lets it pass. 

“I’ve been homeschooled my entire life,” Adrien adds as he fishes out a textbook from his bag, “and I, ah, know this sounds weird, but I do like studying. Physics, especially, so really, this is fine.”

Tikki can’t help another smile rising to her lips. “Okay,” she says, moving to take his mug and hers to the sink. Plagg picks his up for what she’s sure is the first time, then, and she is conscious of him drinking it all at once as she goes on to wash the other two. “Would you like to go upstairs? It’s a bit more comfortable than here.” She wishes she could say _a lot,_ but it’s a lie easily found out and that’s the last thing that kid needs. 

“No, I don’t mind it here,” Adrien says as she places the mugs on the side of the sink to dry and reaches to pull out some stuff from the mini-fridge. “I... I’d rather be down here, actually. More people.”

Tikki has to force herself not to slam the fridge door. She knows all of Mullo’s textbook social care cases – she only hopes this turns out to be for the better. 

“Okay, that’s fine, I was just worried it might be too noisy for you,” she says as she turns around to set some _confiture,_ feta cheese, cream cheese, and butter on the table. Plagg puts a plate, a knife, and a loaf of bread next to the condiments; she refuses to look at him. 

“Help yourself to some breakfast, you must be starving,” she says to Adrien. 

He nods hesitantly, then asks, eyes flickering downwards for a second before meeting hers. “Ah, thank you. Can you, um, tell me where...”

“It’s the door over there,” she replies, hand stretching to the right and somehow not smacking Plagg on the chest; she is aware with a strange sort of ‘awakeness’ of how he is positioned next to her. Adrien nods again and scuffles out of his chair. 

Tikki only drops her hand after he locks the door behind him. “Right,” she says, walking around the side of the table she’d taken earlier to hug Adrien to go towards the door to the main area. She takes her apron off the hanger by the door without even glancing at it, eyes focused on the shopfront. It has started raining outside – gently, the drops streaming down the windows. 

“Thank you for the tea, by the way,” Plagg says, the thoughtful tension in his voice stopping her in her tracks. 

Tikki doesn’t move. She hears him walk up to her, reach with his hand in front of her (no doubt blank) face to take his apron. He ties it around his neck with seemingly expert ease as he opens the door towards the shop with his elbow.

Tikki takes a moment to process what he’d just said. Then another. 

Then she remembers and pushes her way through to the shop, too.

 _Translation of ‘thank you’,_ she thinks: 

_“You do realise you haven’t made me this since we were twelve, right? When you invented it one summer as part of your Great Experimental Phase and asked me for gallons and gallons of my father’s milk so that you could invent a tea I’d like (which, at that time, seemed impossible) until you finally arrived at this. We drank it almost exclusively for a month straight before we just forgot about it, like we forgot about the specific, ‘magical’ way we’d come up with to tie our shoelaces and all the hidden spots in the fields we’d discover, appropriate for a few weeks at a time, and then reserve the place of memories forever. Remember that, Tikki?”_

Or something along those lines, she thinks.

(She does. She remembers all of it, but this time, she can’t decide whether it is fondness that she feels.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter once again betaed by the lovely [Elle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady3ellewrites/pseuds/Lady3ellewrites). This one felt difficult to pull off because I don't really have experience relevant to what Tikki and Adrien are going through, but I hope I managed to do it justice. 
> 
> Let me know what you think - comments make my day. You can also find me on [Tumblr](https://noirshitsuji.tumblr.com/).


	4. you pulled the words out of my mouth

The rest of the day is akin to one of the tiny wind dances leaves do when whisked up by an autumn current; customers in multicoloured coats and jackets – much more than usual – float and buzz around the shop and so both her and Plagg’s attentions are fully seized until the last one chimes the door shut at five past six in the evening. Before Tikki can think of anything to say, her _colleague_ has already brought Adrien out of the back room and handed him his jacket, and so the two bid goodnight to her.

‘Come to the shop again tomorrow, Adrien’, Tikki says, almost reaching out to hug him. Adrien smiles at her warmly; Plagg nods, but won’t look at her, and then they leave.

Tikki goes to bed and is greeted by familiar landscapes that bring her neither terror nor rest, and wakes up a bit earlier in the morning to make a phone call.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Pollen? It’s Tikki, do you have some time to speak now?”

Her old (in the no-longer-such-due-to-lack-of-upkeep-on-both-ends sense) friend sounds surprised but awake. “I do, yes, I have a bit of time before I need to head to work. What’s up?”

“Yes, sorry to bother you this early, but I figured later in the evening might be worse for you. So, I met this teenager yesterday – I’m not sure what age, but definitely still a minor – and he...is experiencing domestic abuse. I know this isn’t likely what you deal with usually as a magistrate, but what do you think we–what can you normally do in this situation?”

“Right... Is there a specific reason you’re calling me for this? I don’t mean to be dismissive, but government information on the matter is quite easily accessible.” Pollen doesn’t sound annoyed, but Tikki can sense she is intrigued. An intrigued Pollen used to spell gossip back in the old days; it also spelled protection. 

Tikki decides to bank on the latter. “His father is... a rather powerful man. In fact,” she decides to add, since withholding Plagg’s name is enough secret-keeping for one conversation, “I believe your department’s still prosecuting him. For multiple sexual assaults.”

Tikki can practically see Pollen’s pupils dilate as her breath hitches over the phone. After a few seconds of silence, her voice is back with: “I see. A very delicate situation, then. Alright, I’ll need to speak with some of my colleagues at Child Protection and somehow shoehorn it in a conversation with my superiors. I will need to tread carefully, though, so that it doesn’t blow up, so it might take me some time to get back to you. Is the son staying with you? Is he alright?”

“He is fine at the moment, yes,” Tikki stops herself from sighing, but she does a half-way sag against the kitchen counter. “And no, he’s not with me at the shop, but a friend’s got him.”

“A friend...” a pause. It occurs to Tikki, then, that Trixx and Pollen do still keep in touch due to working closely together. She swallows. _Oh, no._ “Don’t tell me... Plagg?”

“Yep,” Tikki replies, trying not to let her voice tremble as her body does, and lifts herself from the counter to brew some mint tea. “He was actually the one who–well, brought him around.”

A pause, during which Tikki starts heating up water in the kettle. “And he has a good place? You’re sure of that?” Pollen says, and Tikki knows she’s trying very, very hard not to be judgemental; she can’t blame her, though. 

“Yes, it’s a nice place” Tikki replies as if she’s seen it, pouring the water in the mug. A second later she realises that she cares less about what Pollen might think of the implications of _that_ than of the prospect of having to further explain herself as to _why she would even trust Plagg like this in the first place._

(She still doesn’t know.)

“Okay,” Pollen says, voice calm and friendly, and Tikki suddenly gets the urge to hug her. “I’ll see what I can do and call you back, alright?”

“Alright. Thanks a lot, Pollen.” She scoops up the receiver in the crevice between her shoulder and her chin in order to bring her tea to the table. 

“You’re welcome. Take care, Tikki.”

“You too,” she replies, but the line is already dead. 

Her screen says it’s 7:20, and it being Thursday morning tells her that the bakery opposite the street is closed, so Tikki takes her tea (but not her phone) to the front of the shop to look out into the street for a bit, and sips it as a few small leaf-whirlwinds make their way across it.

* * *

Adrien’s hair is a few centimeters shorter and too brown (although still quite light) when he walks in with a pair of glasses. Tikki has to look at them with some degree of concentration to determine with certainty that they’re not real. He has a sweater that is too large on him to not be Plagg’s (she makes a note to stock up on hams and dairy products in the fridge; his collarbone had been too stark for her taste when she’d seen it yesterday), with equally as beat-up Converse and jeans that could be designer or could be thrift. He even has a different bag on him; a relatively large backpack that seems too big for the two books he’s probably carrying in it (but large enough to house luggage on the Saintévie-Le Havre or the Le Havre-Paris train route). 

“What do you think?” Plagg asks her, a certain kind of satisfaction in his voice and a little bit of pride in his smirk, and she can’t help herself:

“Not bad,” she says, feeling the corners of her lips pull up, “but I can do you one better.”

She runs upstairs, rifles through her small make-up pouch until she fishes out the eyeliner pencil, make-up remover, and a few cotton pads and runs back downstairs. 

The other two are already in the kitchen, Plagg watching the kettle and Adrien evening the edges of his books to the side of the table, looking only a tad bit less lost than the day before. Tikki glances at the clock: 7:48, _just enough time to get this perfectly_.

“Okay, Adrien, chin up.”

It’s not technically hard, placing the tiny dots on his nose and his cheekbones and all the way up to his forehead; Adrien sits with a stillness one can expect only of child models and the eye of a storm, and, really, she doesn’t have to apply any strength or _technical_ brilliance, but she wants to get this _just right–_

“Tikki,” Plagg says, and she flinches on the inside but her hand remains stable, “it’s good enough. We only have two more minutes, we need to get ready.”

She mutters something – about getting (at least) this right – and then she feels a palm settle over the shoulder of the hand that is holding Adrien’s face still. “Come on. It looks natural, really, it does.”

And maybe it’s the physical contact that snaps her out of it, maybe it’s how strange his voice sounds in her ears (she half-expects to hear it a bit higher, maybe, still), maybe it’s how he still knows exactly what praise to give her to get her to lay her sword and her shield down, but Tikki lets go of Adrien’s face and nods. 

“Yes, it does look good,” she says almost automatically, smiling at the boy in front of her, who returns the gesture, eyes shifting for a minuscule second between her and Plagg, and then she can see a bit of mask in it as well, a bit of understanding in his polite silence. 

Then the hand lifts off of her shoulder and she feels like she can breathe again (but no, she’s been breathing all along, just in a different way) and then she rises from her chair and the apron’s already being handed to her with a strange expression of controlled neutrality she’s starting to get used to seeing in the mirror when she practices talking with him some mornings, and they’re off to face the day again.

* * *

Tikki turns the sign at the door at 17:05 because Thursdays are slow days anyway and the teenage boy in her back room has overtaken as the largest elephant in her life right now (a metaphor still appropriate beyond rhetoric due to the room itself being relatively small). She walks in the backroom to an already-brewed cup of thyme tea with milk and honey (and a gaze which is not quite a question; she nods at Plagg, and gets a quick crinkling of the eyes in return) and sits down in the same chair she’d taken the previous day. Adrien shuts his physics textbook and smiles up at her, a little worse for wear, but still looking better than he had when they’d last been in this position. 

Which is just as well, since the conversation they need to have might hurt him even more.

Tikki decides to start easy. “How was it today? Sitting in here and working by yourself?” she says as she lifts her cup. 

“It was alright, I went through a lot of–are you alright?” Adrien asks as she starts blinking away tears upon tasting her drink. 

“I’m fine, yeah, it’s just that the tea is somehow still too hot,” she replies, the lie tumbling out before she can stop and think about it, and she can feel a nagging look at her back from where Plagg is leaning on the sink behind her. 

(The tea’s at perfect temperature and they both know it because they’d mastered putting the milk in at the right moment, and it was impossible for it to be hot due to the milk coming straight out of the fridge regardless. They’re also probably both aware it’s nostalgia, but it’s unlikely that Plagg can sense that it’s more sweet than bitter, Tikki thinks.)

Tikki clears her throat. “Not too much noise from the front?”

Adrien _politely_ doesn’t ask further, even though he probably knows the laws of thermodynamics better than her. “Yes, it wasn’t that much of a problem.” He averts his eyes before continuing. “I...I had fun, really.” 

_Everything about this boy is a diamond taken out of the rough,_ Tikki thinks, _and then cut and fashioned into a decorative, mute mantelpiece._

“Adrien, I hate to ask this,” and she does, but there are things she can help him figure out and there are things he needs to figure out on his own, “but what do you want to do with all of this?”

He blinks at her, visibly startled. “Pardon?”

“I don’t expect you to have a detailed plan of the future,” she attempts to clarify, “or a five-year strategy or anything like that, but I do want to know what _you_ want. I contacted one of our old friends this morning about help because I understand that you need to be separated from your father – notice the difference here, _need, not necessarily want,_ ” she adds on when she sees him flinch, “and, well, even as an ordinary citizen I have some form of duty of care over you as a minor, which compels me to report your case to the authorities. I hope you can understand that.”

“I do,” Adrien replies, eyes lowering from hers, “and I don’t... _well, there is no other way, is there_?” His voice cracks.

“No, there isn’t,” she says, showcasing all the recognition she can that his tone had asked the opposite of what his words had. “Our friend will check in from her side about how this case can be handled, given how...well, influential your father is.”

“...And his other sus-suspected crimes, r-right?” Adrien mutters, head bending forward. Tikki tries to ignore the small sobs she can see shaking his chest.

“Yes,” she says, slightly surprised at how steady her own voice is, _but practice makes perfect, doesn’t it?_ “but that’s not–”

There it is again, the hand on her shoulder. She looks up at Plagg this time, and he shakes his head at her before moving to place his other hand on Adrien’s shoulder, whose tears Tikki can see falling down on his lap. She gets up as inconspicuously as she can and fetches the paper napkins.

After a few minutes, Adrien looks up at her again – eyes red-rimmed, with more visible bags under them, breathing still a little shaky ( _he looked so well and you just had to go and–_ a voice in her head starts, but Tikki squashes it before it can go any further), and starts the conversation again himself:

“I get what you’re asking, and I... I don’t know.” A pause, then: “I want to go to school. I want to graduate. I want to... never do modeling ever again, probably. Maybe. I want to do physics. I _maybe_ want to try acting. I–sorry, that’s still not quite what you’re asking me–”

“It’s fine, kid,” Plagg says. Tikki can see him squeezing Adrien’s shoulder a bit more. “Don’t apologise,” he’s echoing her from yesterday, and she can see Adrien sigh in what is not-quite-yet but would hopefully soon become relief, and she breathes a bit more easily for that.

“I... There’s my aunt, Amelie, and my cousin, Felix, but they both live in London, and I don’t think I’d be ready for that so soon after the... fallout–”

(–Tikki feels even more sorry for him because of this mutual understanding they’d all picked up yesterday that nobody had said out loud yet: that a conviction was a best-case scenario, and everything elsе–)

“–and the only other person I have here is, well, Nino...”

Trail-off. Adrien looks like he’s trying hard not to let his eyes shift between the two of them, to look for an anchor only to find empty air. Tikki’s throat constricts, a million thoughts rushing in her head, and while first and foremost there’s compassion for this boy who’s probably never even been given the chance to deserve anything like this, the second thought that comes is the crushing weight of every single similarity she shares with him in terms of bridges burned and should-be-burned and burned-nots, and she’s so small and alone she can barely–

“We’re here for you too, kid, whatever happens,” Plagg says. 

Tikki’s mind grinds to a halt. 

“Which sounds weird, probably,” he adds, and there it is, the bit of a joke that usually accompanied his voice, “given that there’s no lying about how much we _don’t_ know each other and how just as confused we are about this situation as you are. But this is not some grand sentiment I’m expressing here, Adrien,” he adds, and crouches down to be at eye-level with him, who is staring with the wide-eyed perplexity that would make one think he’s never experienced kindness from strangers in his life. 

“I’m not going to go ahead and convince you of what sorts of people Tikki and I are, or of what we can or should mean to you, save for one thing: we’ve known too many kids who’ve gone through something terrible–” and he glances in her direction and she nods on instinct ( _and maybe this is when she starts forgiving him_ ) _,_ “–and no, scratch that, it’s true, but more importantly, we _are_ those kids. And even if our situations are different, it doesn’t matter, because I am definitely not the ideal role model myself and, well, I can’t drag somebody out of poverty or anything remotely heroic like that, but I still grew up to be an _adult_ who _refuses_ to leave a kid in need of a safe space to wander around without one, and so I sure as _hell can_ guarantee you at least that.”

Adrien, who’d been shaking again ever since Plagg started his speech, lunges at the older man and clings to his neck. Tikki wipes away at her cheekbone. 

“I am the same,” she says, and puts the damn on everything else, Plagg’s flushed cheeks, _you lost your space at 17_ and _but so did I_ and _I would like to get it back_ , and carries on. “And this question wasn’t...I didn’t mean to say I wanted you off of our hands or anything like that. I just needed to know what we should be angling for with all of this, because then we can advocate for you with that in mind in front of social services and–”

Plagg pulls her in and Adrien’s hand clasps on the other side of her back and the hug is warm and it’s slightly uncomfortable because she’s hanging off of her chair, but it feels like _home,_ like _trust,_ almost like _family–_

“You’re great people. Both of you,” Adrien says, sniffling a bit. “Thank you.” A pause, then, somehow with precisely the same mischievous notes Plagg always hits: “I couldn’t wish for better strangers to randomly stumble upon and be effectively adopted by.”

Tikki can’t help but chuckle at that, and feeling Plagg’s chest move with his laughter makes her own chest feel even lighter. 

They still after a bit, and “To be honest, I...don’t really like being left alone in here,” Adrien says, tentatively. “I was always alone at home if not for my tutors, and I don’t...”

“It’s okay,” Tikki replies, a small shush sneaking in the beginning of her sentence as she starts pulling away to look at Adrien properly. “You can work with us in the front if you’d like. We’d need to, ah, perfect your disguise a bit,” she adds, grinning towards his run-down freckles and the spots on Plagg’s shoulder, “but it should be fine.”

Adrien’s smile seems to warm up at that. She feels a hand squeeze her shoulder again and she turns around to see Plagg looking at her with flushed cheeks and an intensity he seems to be trying very hard to hide and–

“Hello, Tikki?” she hears a voice that could only be Marinette call. “I saw the closed sign on the door but we agreed I’d pick up our usual delivery today and the door was open so–”

Two things go through Tikki’s mind at that moment: the first one is _ah, damn, I forgot,_ and the second one is _Marinette_ ** _knows_** _him._

Tikki tries to convey her panic wordlessly to both Adrien and Plagg while hurriedly standing up and smoothing her clothes down. “Just a moment, please,” she says, both of them nodding as Adrien reaches for more napkins and Plagg downs his tea in what looks like one go as she exits the back area.

Marinette is eyeing the _confiture de lait_ with the same love she’d had for it when she’d been ten, and Tikki can’t help but tease her for it not only to distract her, but also for the fun of it: “Please tell me you haven’t already eaten a few of these, we won’t be having much more coming in for a while.” 

(Tikki had had to cancel a couple of orders to pay a couple of bills, and Marinette was her best – and, during a lot of periods, only – buyer.)

“Mmm, can’t tell, really, you’ll have to count them,” the girl shoots back and turns to look at Tikki with a wide smile on her face that dims a little as she takes her in. “Is everything alright? Why is this place closed up so early?”

“New employee training,” Tikki says without thinking and immediately regrets it when she sees Marinette’s eyes light up.

“Can I meet him?”1

“Ah, he’s going over some stuff with Plagg in the back, I’m not sure–”

“Hello, sorry,” Adrien says, head poking out from the back room, a model-worthy smile on his face _,_ “I thought I heard myself being mentioned.”

And then he seems to register who the person in front of him is and he _stills._

Marinette’s eyebrows furrow.

“We already finished with the stuff out back, Tikki,” Plagg adds, head appearing above Adrien’s, _two quick blinks to say everything’s fine if this really is the old signal at work (he hasn’t caught on yet, it seems)._ “If Marinette’s looking for a boyfriend, she can take this one for a test flirt, and see how that goes.”

Both teenagers splutter and Tikki hopes, _hopes,_ for a few glorious seconds that the moment has passed and the ruse won’t be up–

“You know, you do look kind of familiar,” Marinette says, walking towards Adrien. He stands still again.

“Really? I don’t think we’ve ever met, I’m… Athanase,” Adrien says as he hesitantly steps out from the backroom and reaches out with his hand towards Marinette, who takes it, slightly warily.

“Nice to meet you, I’m–” she starts, stops, then clasps his hand more firmly in hers and lifts it up to her face, inspecting it. His face immediately flares up, but all Tikki can think of is–

“Marinette,” the girl finally finishes. She looks up at him again and drops his hand. “But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

Adrien stares at her for a moment, then lowers his eyes. Tikki sees Marinette looking over at Plagg, who keeps her eyes steady for a few moments before she turns towards Tikki herself.

Tikki hopes to convey more than she possibly could, more than she knows, more than she understands, while they’re looking at each other. Marinette starts chewing on her lip, but her eyebrows unravel and her gaze softens. Then, she nods and turns towards Adrien again, who has started shaking slightly again and has one arm braced across his chest.

“I’m very sorry, Ad–” he flinches at that and she shuts her mouth for a moment before continuing. 

“I don’t–I won’t pretend to understand… what happened to get you here. I’m glad you are, though,” she hastens to add, glancing at both Plagg and Tikki again before taking a step towards Adrien again. “If… if your reasons are anything like what I suspect they are, I’m glad you’re here. Tikki and Plagg are both good people,” Tikki’s heart somersaults at the sincerity in her voice and she looks over at Plagg’s face – but she can’t read it. 

“Nino… He said that you’d promised to reach out if anything happened,” Marinette continues, taking another step towards Adrien, who is visibly trying to stop his trembling. “I don’t–I wouldn’t force you to do anything, of course, and I won’t tell anybody if you don’t want me to, but just know that – my parents, they would never hesitate to help, and neither would Nino and his family, and just–” her mouth clamps shut again and she stops, balling her hands in fists to her sides.

There is a beat of silence before Adrien looks up. His eyes are dry, Tikki notes gladly, and his voice comes out steady:

“Thank you, Marinette,” he takes a deep breath, and then: “Please tell Nino I lost his number by accident. I have a new one as well, so he couldn’t have reached me if he tried.”

“Alright,” Marinette says, smiles, fishes out her own phone. “You can copy his number down from my phone.”

Adrien nods vigorously and smiles as well. “Yes, thank you.”

Marinette types in her password and hands him the phone. Their hands meet just as a clap of thunder sounds from the outside. Tikki jumps at the sound of it, but neither of them moves; they just stare into each other’s eyes as if they’ve only seen them for the first time–

–and Tikki can _definitely_ see two matching blushes there, and she looks over at Plagg and they raise their eyebrows and roll their eyes in sync and, for a moment, her life is aligned again–

–and then Tikki blinks, realises what had just happened, but before she can process it Plagg’s eyes are gone from hers and he says:

“So, uh, Marinette, delivery is behind the counter.”

 _This_ makes the girl jump. “Roger that,” Marinette barks, leaving the phone in Adrien’s palm, and she heads stiffly towards the counter. Tikki watches Adrien watch her for a moment before remembering himself and setting to copying Nino’s phone number.

Marinette heaves one of the two boxes up on the counter and immediately reaches for the second one, and it suddenly hits Tikki that she’s _grown_ so much from the little girl who used to require supervision any time she was fifteen meters within radius of a pair of scissors, and her heart swells at the thought.

“Marinette, you’re probably going to need some help with taking these boxes outside,” Tikki says, and doesn’t even have to look at Adrien before he says:

“I can help.”

Marinette glances in his direction and immediately looks down again, muttering something indistinct. They heave the two boxes and push their way out of the show and towards Marinette’s (special delivery-modified) bike.

What follows is silence. Tikki decides she’d rather actually take a look at the _confiture de lait_ jars, but then:

“I’m sorry, but how did she figure that out?”

“I think I told you about the hat-designing contest she won, right?” Tikki says, turning to look at Plagg, who is casually leaning against the doorframe of the back room. “She also designed some jewelry for the boy – well, Adrien, – who was supposed to model it later, so I guess she knows his hands.” She pauses, then, reconsiders, “Or maybe she just needed an excuse to take a closer look at his face and staring at it directly was too weird. I’m not sure.”

“Right,” Plagg says.

There is a beat of silence so on the edge of comfortable that follows and Tikki wonders how they got here–

“From odd kids to fairly odd parents, eh?”

She blinks in surprise. “Some wishes we grant,” she says, turning to face him with a matching grin, and at least it _feels_ sincere. “Familial disbandment and sharing all your secrets with strangers is what we stand for,” and that is a lie that should cut deeper than it does because these things are important to both of them, but–

“What else?” he replies. He wags his eyebrows at her after that, a bit delayed, but she still chuckles and he still follows before the bell chimes and Adrien returns inside, a bit less dazed than Tikki had expected, and they start closing for the night.

 _(It’s not like we have much else, do we?_ she thinks, but doesn’t say.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Because of the way French generally works, Tikki is going to gender employee in the language, i.e. giving Marinette the information that it's a 'him'. Back
> 
> Huge shout-out to [Elle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady3ellewrites/pseuds/Lady3ellewrites) for betaing this chapter as well! Go check out her work, she deserves it.
> 
> Comments make my day and I'm open to interacting with people on [Tumblr](https://noirshitsuji.tumblr.com/) as well.


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